MARCH 08 - APRIL 28, 2007
Painted Sculpture and Reliefs
Annunciation No. 1 (Cast 3/4)
NER-393-SC
Hackett-Freedman Gallery of San Francisco presents an exhibition of new painted sculptures and relief panels by preeminent sculptor Manuel Neri, winner of the International Sculpture Center’s 2006 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, March 8–April 28, 2007. A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, March 8, at 250 Sutter Street, 4th Floor, from 5:30–7:30pm.
This exhibition is concurrent with “Manuel Neri: The Figure in Relief,” a comprehensive survey on view at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey through April 29, 2007, which will travel to the Portland Art Museum, Oregon later in the year. A 196-page monograph Manuel Neri: The Figure in Relief, published by Hudson Hills Press and featuring text by Maxwell Anderson, Bruce Guenther, and Bruce Nixon, accompanies the Grounds for Sculpture exhibition. Manuel Neri’s work will also be on view at Madrid’s ARCO art fair, February 15–19, 2007.
Neri has been experiencing an exceptionally vital period in his artistic career, working weekly with his longtime model and muse poet Mary Julia Klimenko and spending up to five days a week in his Northern California studio painting. His recent output is particularly powerful and emphatic. In these sculptures, Neri’s interest in combining classical antiquity, and its evocation of timelessness and monumentality, with the language of contemporary abstraction and its syntax of contrasting textures, colors, and forms reaches a new apogee. The wide-ranging influences of Medieval altarpiece carving, Quattrocento reliefs, and Giacometti’s standing women can be seen in these recent figures and intimate bronze reliefs and maquettes. For example, Maha–Bronze Maquette V (2006) recalls the technique of fifteenth-century Florentine relief carving, specifically the spatial recessions employed by Antonio Rossellino or Luca della Robbia.1
Neri continues to explore the sculptural possibilities of bronze and marble. His recent work in marble is the product of the artist’s extended engagement with Italy, where he has maintained a studio for the past thirty years.
The bronzes are cast in editions of four—each work individually painted and uniquely different. Neri’s early plaster sculptures from the fifties and sixties now command in excess of $500,000, while full-size painted bronze sculptures sell in the $200,000 range. At the recent 2006 Art Basel | Miami Beach art fair, one of Neri's Window series abstract paintings from the 1950s sold for a record price of $325,000.
Manuel Neri’s work is internationally renowned and has been featured in numerous solo museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. His sculpture and painting is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and the San Jose Museum of Art. He maintains studios in Benicia, California, and Carrara, Italy.
1. Bruce Nixon, “The Form in Time: Relief Sculptures by Manuel Neri,” Manuel Neri: The Figure in Relief (Manchester: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), p. 44.